“Kathai Thiraikathai Vasanam Iyakkam”… Fact of the meta

At the beginning of Kathai Thiraikathai Vasanam Iyakkam, directed by Radhakrishnan Parthiban, we watch a tidal wave demolish a skyscraper, and from this Hollywood-style scene of destruction we move to a house, in another corner of the country, where a young man delivers a Kollywood-style aphorism, about the difference between biriyani and pazhaya soru. Then, without warning, without proper introduction, we encounter a guitar player, her students, and menacing soldiers – it’s some kind of wartime situation. Quite naturally, the next scene deposits us in Brahma’s abode, where the Creator is cramming brains into infants like an assembly-line worker and dispatching them to earth. If none of this makes sense, at least not taken together, there’s a reason. We are in the midst of a story discussion session, and these disconnected scenes are possible ideas for a movie.

With Jigarthanda and Kathai Thiraikathai, we seem to be in the midst of a little “meta” festival, with filmmakers outside as well as inside these films offering a running commentary on the state of the industry. Both films are centered on aspiring directors, and both feature a crass, money-minded producer as well as an older character (Thambi Ramaiah here; and he’s fantastic) who dreamed of being a director but is now a hanger-on in the fringes. Both films make space for a cameo by Vijay Sethupathi. Both films, in the second half, depict a film-within-a-film (based on the experiences of characters). Both films toy with genres – in this case, we segue from a “plotless” comedy to a drama. And both films wink at well-established tropes. We have, here, a spin on that cliché of the girl falling for the boy when she’s literally… falling, and he catches her and they lock eyes. Love at first sight, I believe it’s called.

Kathai Thiraikathai isn’t as powerful or resonant as Jigarthanda, but it doesn’t need to be – its aims are more modest. For a good part, it just wants to make us laugh – and that it does very well. The one-liners and Parthiban’s trademark dialogues are funny enough (or corny enough, depending on your taste) to camouflage the fact that this is actually a pretty serious premise, about a filmmaker (Thamizh, played by Santhosh Prathap) who reads Scott Fitzgerald and Ponniyin Selvan but is forced to listen to anecdotes about Anbe Vaa, Namma Veettu Dheivam and Vellikizhamai Viratham, that superhit about snakes where the meet-cute between hero and heroine is engineered by a monkey. The writing team, later, goes into raptures over Aval Appadithan. How great it is to see a film that’s over thirty years old, and still so inspiring. And then, we get this rude reminder: upon its release, the film was a flop.

To aim for posterity or to (as a song goes) “live the moment”? Parthiban blithely opts for the latter approach – and quite literally. Thamizh decides that his film will not have a story, and this allows Parthiban to dispense with a conventional plot where each scene locks into the next one. He just lives from… moment to moment. This is the logical culmination of the film’s beginning, with those seemingly unrelated sequences, and it urges us to give the proceedings the benefit of the doubt. Is the bar scene there because today’s films are inconceivable without a bar scene – in other words, is Parthiban selling out with an eye on the box office – or is the scene there… just because? Are the rhyming dialogues simply the result of Parthiban’s love for wordplay, or are they spoofing such lines from our cinema? The nods to the thaali sentiment are easier to recognize – they’re just wicked nudges in the rib.

Kathai Thiraikathai, for the most part, is borne along rhythms that are slightly off-kilter, and it has the snap of a student film – and also the awkward, self-conscious performances. The only parts that didn’t work for me are those where Thamizh quarrels with his headstrong wife (Akhila Kishore) – these stretches are too tethered to plot. Suddenly, a free-flowing film, which lingered on a whim on subplots about a suicide and a daft watchman (my favourite character), begins to crawl along a straight line. I could have also lived without the scenes in which the director chooses to become part of the film, a living-breathing quotation mark. But the ending is terrific. Parthiban manages to have it both ways: he remains true to the film’s philosophy, and he remains true to his audience’s (namely, the Tamil film audience’s) need for closure. Isn’t Tamil cinema’s newfound meta-love just wonderful?

“… and he remains true to his audience’s (namely, the Tamil film audience’s) need for closure … “

I’d love to know how you read the closure. I’ve been piecing it together and the answer seems to depend on whether the first of the four was considered to have come true. It’s like one of those whodunits where all the evidence is right there in front of your eyes if only you could really see them for what they are.

I don’t mean to be cloak-and-dagger-ish here, but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone.

Sangeetha:There’s no “reading” necessary here, right? It’s right there on screen. The best part of the film — at least, the part I enjoyed most — was the end, because there are really two endings. One, where we think the film stops, as the crew waits for Dhananjayan’s call.

Then we have the song, and at the end of it, we have ending two, as we discover that the song isn’t just a random song but a part of the film being shot by… Thamizh. Which means that they did get a positive call from Dhananjayan 🙂

I’m guessing you left the theatre when the song began? Or is your question something else entirely?

Ah, you guessed right. We did leave at the start of the song and wholly missed ending #2. What a pity!

That’s beautiful. Does that mean it leaves ending 3 still open – about whether or not he gets back with his wife? If that girl’s intuition works out 50-50, and she was wrong about their success with the producer and she was wrong (or right) about her first one about the tragedy, then that leaves at least one of the two that she has about them being together to come true. Deep waters these.

This is off-topic, but I was looking to buy a version of Conversations with the chapter on Kadal through Flipkart and found the following entry that made me appreciate a dimension of the book that I hadn’t noticed before 🙂
Conversations with Mani Ratnam : Insight and Innovation Beyond Analytics and Big Data (English) http://goo.gl/54UKWe

i really liked the movie, the main reason being it was packed with content for the whole 2 hour …it had all ingredients I would expect from a Parthiban movie (as a director) and it was so different..dialogues were great.. I would rate this higher than NKPK ..hope it does well in box-office

I felt parthiban was making a point that cinema is story telling art and it isn’t about giving irrelvant twists to cheat the audience.

There was a scene in which he asks a comman man to narrate a story. This guy tells a story (a mysskin kind shots) with twist. parthiben made the entire movie with similar kind of twists. and he tagged this movie as ‘ a film without storyline’. Was he targeting so called new age directors?

In a dialogue thambi ramiah says it is necessary to tell audience within 20 min of start of the movie what the story is.

There are many scenes in which he emphasised how important is climax for a movie.

Putting these things together i felt he was mocking sensibilties of audience.

BR, also both films (JT and KTVI) made references to Aarunya kaandam .. finally it is starting to get the position it deserves (in a positive way I mean).. hope it is re-released now (whoever does it might actually money with it now)

I did get to see the ending #2. But it doesn’t seem to be the movie he wanted to make. With the usual song and dance, he seems to have “settled down” with what he gets…..(and that answers the question if he got to get back with his wife)…..which is what I loved about the whole movie..

Also wondering if he consciously avoided using the star names in marketing the movie, to stay original to what he has made….atleast it would have made more money if the poster had the star faces…something like in “swayamvaram”